Quote Originally Posted by Tonymitsu View Post
Rules As Intended are author recommendations for how a DM should rule in his game when encountering an actual ambiguity, or text that is otherwise unclear. It is something invoked during a game whenever you have text that does not otherwise clearly indicate author intent.

*snip*

The concept of Rules As Written vs. Rules As Intended is not, and was never meant to be, license to ignore context and invent your own interpretations for text in which intent is blatantly obvious, but specific words and phrases that forbid alternate interpretations are not present. If you have ten tables attempting to interpret the 3.5 ruleset using rules technicalities, you will have ten tables playing ten entirely different games.

Even if such technicalities have their place in the theoretical, they are not useful constructs for the purposes of optimization. For reasons which at this point, I hope, are abundantly clear.
Yeah, when we talk about RAI, we try to guess what the intention of the designer(s) might have been.
RAI is used to correct RAW in the errata. But that doesn't change the limits of RAW.

When we talk about context in 3.5 terms, it's the presence and absence of keywords what limits us. And you may not interpret keywords into non keywords.
Otherwise it would become a problem, if the intent is to talk about something that sounds like / is similar to a keyword, but has nothing to do with it. Everybody would imply the keyword and it would end in a mess. That's the reason behind the exact use of keywords/-terms.

Draconomicon P4 had 2 (!) opportunities to use "Advancement".
First for counting as true dragon and the other is to disqualify as lesser dragon. But for some reason (as it seems to me) they avoided the use of "Advancement".
The reason is "Other True Dragons" on P144. Advancement can't be a requirement if the same book tells you that those true dragons who lack it, have to gain it by the DM.

I'm still waiting for your explanation how your interpretation works with the "other true dragons" gain Advancement rule without causing rule dysfunctions...